“Yes,” said I. “I have guessed.”
Lucetta, with her hand laid on mine, looked wistfully into my face.
“Don’t blame us!” she cried. “Our mother’s good name is everything to us, and we knew no other way to preserve it than by making use of the one superstition of this place. Alas! our efforts were in vain. The phantom coach brought our mother safely to us, but the circumstances which led to our doors being opened to outsiders, rendered it impossible for us to carry out our plans unsuspected. Her grave has been discovered and desecrated, and we—”
She stopped, choked. Loreen took advantage of her silence to pursue the explanations she seemed to think necessary.
“It was Simsbury who undertook to bring our dying mother from C station to our door. He has a crafty spirit under his meek ways, and dressed himself in a way to lend color to the superstition he hoped to awaken. William, who did not dare to accompany him for fear of arousing gossip, was at the gate when the coach drove in. It was he who lifted our mother out, and it was while she still clung to him with her face pressed close to his breast that we saw her first. Ah! what a pitiable sight it was! She was so wan, so feeble, and yet so radiantly happy.
“She looked up at Lucetta, and her face grew wonderful in its unearthly beauty. She was not the mother we remembered, but a mother whose life had culminated in the one desire to see and clasp her children again. When she could tear her eyes away from Lucetta, she looked at me, and then the tears came, and we all wept together, even William; and thus weeping and murmuring words of welcome and cheer, we carried her upstairs and laid her in the great front chamber. Alas! we did not foresee what would happen the very next morning—I mean the arrival of your telegram, to be followed so soon by yourself.”
“Poor girls! Poor girls!” It was all I could say. I was completely overwhelmed.
“The first night after your arrival we moved her into William’s room as being more remote and thus a safer refuge for her. The next night she died. The dream which you had of being locked in your room was no dream. Lucetta did that in foolish precaution against your trying to search us out in the night. It would have been better if we had taken you into our confidence.”
“Yes,” I assented, “that would have been better.” But I did not say how much better. That would have been giving away my secret.
Lucetta had now recovered sufficiently to go on with the story.
“William, who is naturally colder than we and less sensitive in regard to our mother’s good name, has shown some little impatience at the restraint imposed upon him by her presence, and this was an extra burden, Miss Butterworth, but that and all the others we have been forced to bear” (the generous girl did not speak of her own special grief and loss) “have all been rendered useless by the unhappy chance which has brought into our midst this agent of the police. Ah, if I only knew whether this was the providence of God rebuking us for years of deception, or just the malice of man seeking to rob us of our one best treasure, a mother’s untarnished name!”
“Mr. Gryce acts from no malice—” I began, but I saw they were not listening.
“Have they finished down below?” asked Lucetta.
“Does the man you call Gryce seem satisfied?” asked Loreen.
I drew myself up physically and mentally. My second task was about to begin.
“I do not understand those men,” said I. “They seem to want to look farther than the sacred spot where we left them. If they are going through a form, they are doing it very thoroughly.”
“That is their duty,” observed Loreen, but Lucetta took it less calmly.
“It is an unhappy day for us!” cried she. “Shame after shame, disgrace upon disgrace! I wish we had all died in our childhood. Loreen, I must see William. He will be doing some foolish thing, swearing or—”
“My dear, let me go to William,” I urgently put in. “He may not like me overmuch, but I will at least prove a restraint to him. You are too feeble. See, you ought to be lying on the couch instead of trying to drag yourself out to the stables.”
And indeed at that moment Lucetta’s strength gave suddenly out, and she sank into Loreen’s arms insensible.
When she was restored, I hurried away to the stables, still in pursuit of the task which I had not yet completed. I found William sitting doggedly on a stool in the open doorway, grunting out short sentences to the two men who lounged in his vicinity on either side. He was angry, but not as angry as I had seen him many times before. The men were townsfolk and listened eagerly to his broken sentences. One or two of these reached my ears.
“Let ’em go it. It won’t be now or today they’ll settle this business. It’s the devil’s work, and devils are sly. My house won’t give up that secret, or any other house they’ll be likely to visit. The place I would ransack—But Loreen would say I was babbling. Goodness knows a fellow’s got to talk about something when his fellow-townsfolk come to see him.” And here his laugh broke in, harsh, cruel, and insulting. I felt it did him no good, and made haste to show myself.
Immediately his whole appearance changed. He was so astonished to see me there that for a moment he was absolutely silent; then he
